USELESS OBSESSIONS

The follow-up to the President's speech to Congress made it very clear that, not only will many disagree with everything regardless of its merit, people will never cease to be enraged when things have not gone according to their desire, regardless of their having no mandate to make the calls. The Republicans seem to insist on saying the good ideas are theirs. Where have they been hiding them these past 8 years. They are losers, obsessed with convincing the country that they are really winners. How sad. If Bobby Jindal is their great hope to be the next Republican president, that's even sadder.....for them.

Republicans continue to be obsessed with negativism and scare tactics. They are like reviewers who think they have not done a good job if they can't find something wrong, even when there is nothing wrong to find. Most of us have had bosses in our careers who felt that an employee evaluation had to have some negatives because the next year's goal had to have some tangible growth ....more experience and a job superbly and conscientiously done just wasn't enough.

This is all similar to those who are obsessed with finding 'who is at fault'? Even when they succeed, it does nothing towards solving the problem, does it? If you catch a murderer, it doesn't solve the death of the victim, it solves the problem of punishing the killer and, hopefully, preventing any future murders by the same perpetrator.

Useless obsessions, in my definition, are those that lead nowhere and accomplish nothing positive. When one is truly obsessed, as many great inventors have been, to solve a problem others have deemed insoluble, that is not a useless obsession...at least, not if the solution is finally found.

Just as the Republicans were obsessed with Bill Clinton's extramarital sex life, (to the great detriment of getting anything constructive accomplished for the country), Rush Limbaugh is obsessed with his power to influence people against the Democrats, also to the detriment of the country by keeping hate and divisiveness alive while President Obama is trying to get the country working together, united for a better America. The media, too, in their obsession to get viewers and listeners, continues to split, though it was nice to see Rupert Murdoch make such a nice apology. Maybe he is beginning to realize that there are many ready to push for the old constrictive rules; one owner not owning too many media outlets.

I'm sure that, as time goes on, we shall see many more useless obsessions made visible to us all.